PLAY Portraits: Astrid from Triple Topping

(Welcome to Elk is the winner of the Creative Gaming Award - Most Creative Game at the PLAY Festival)

RTP: Was "Welcome to Elk" the first project you worked on?

Astrid: We are doing “Welcome to Elk” in fulltime for about a year now. But it’s been in a sort of brainstorm and pre-development status for like six months before. I would say, it took one and a half year. This is actually a longer story because we started out as my bachelor project and today, we are five people working on it together in a studio called triple topping. So it is the second project for me. Exactly a year ago we released our first game which is called “Spitkiss” which is a platformer game. It is also on steam but it plays best on mobile. And then we also have another project that we are working on beside “Welcome to Elk” that is called Ynglet and we are working together with a developer named Nifflas.

RTP: In which parts of the development did you take part?

Astrid: Of course, people have their special areas, Simon is a programmer, Murray is the art director and I write the script but we like to see our self as a band. To make sure you have the best end product and the best result we like to "Gamejam" our way through everything. We are really open and have flat orders for our development, so everybody gives input to the story, ask questions or come up with new ideas and if it´s a good thing than I put it together in the main script

RTP: Which experiences did you take from the project? Is there anything that you would like to share with other young developers that are getting started with their own project?

Astrid: Yes, definitely. First of all: go home and sleep. I think this is a huge issue in the game industry. Me, especially, when we started out, I thought that you have to work 24h/7 and that’s not something that I would recommend you to. If you go home at five and don´t think about the game, I´m pretty sure you will be more creative the day after.

RTP: Are there other games or things that inspired you within your work?

Astrid: The game started as my bachelor project, so I had the idea of telling those little stories. Simon and Murray came up with the idea of minigames and I would say this inspiration comes definitely from games like night in the woods. We also looked at movies, comics, the Art style was a lot inspired by BoJack Horseman. I also look a lot in different movies, so over all, there are lots of different references.

RTP Are there already projects for the future?

Astrid: I think, what I learned from a game like Spitkiss: it was more a game about relationships, but it doesn’t have any correlation with real life. I think with “Welcome to Elk” which is based on real stories, I can say that this is a style and a direction that we are going to do more at triple topping in the next time.

RTP: What experiences do you take home from the PLAY Festival?

Astrid: We were welcomed by a very open and warm community here, I have been in the industry for quite a while now, like 5 years, but I think if you are really new to the game industry "PLAY"-Festival seems like a good place to go for young developers.